Ayatana Hamlet & Spa Chiang Mai

We were supposed to meet at the guesthouse around 9 AM which seemed late to me as I get up early. So I get up around 6 am and get my stuff ready and went for an early morning walk around Chiang Mai as I love the peaceful sounds of the morning. On the way back I eat breakfast and grab my stuff and go to the meeting point at 8:30. I meet with a couple of the guys that will be doing the trek also. Our guide is running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to get his last minute stuff together. (He actually seemed unorganized) The Sawngtao showed up a few minutes before 9 so we started loading our stuff into the truck. We still didn't have all of our group members so we had to wait for them. Around 9:15 our guide found them as they had gone for breakfast and lost track of the time. Meanwhile I'm biting at the bit wanting to get trekking and discover long lost hilltribes! After we got our SawngTao loaded up and were cruising past the city limits of Chiang Mai we turned onto a dirt road so I knew the adventure had begun. I thought that because we had paid for a trek and that the Sawng Tao had 10 people and 7 backpacks and other supplies in it that we wouldn't be stopping until we got to the place that we would start trekking. But I was wrong! We stopped along the way and picked up more paying passengers and at one time had 19 people in and on top and hanging off the back! After about 20 minutes of bouncing down the dusty road we had a blow out on one of the rear tires. Great! I assumed that we didn't have a spare but I was wrong about that we had one. So after about 10 minutes of changing the tire we were again bouncing down the Northern Thailand countryside.